Dean Chavez, second from left, was allowed to coach in a Babe Ruth baseball league despite a prior conviction in the beating death of a Chicago police officer — Hegewisch Babe Ruth Baseball

For once, it’s not what the youth sports coach did while serving as the leader of young men that has landed the board of one Chicago youth sports league in hot water. It’s what he did before he was a coach.

Yet that didn’t quell criticism of the remainder of the board, leading to the six resignations en masse on Wednesday night.

While the sudden firestorm might seem to be understandable to most, the board members who resigned insist they were caught out by the criticism, particularly because the entire community understood about Chavez’s past.

Mike Zivat, a board member for three years until his resignation Wednesday, said Chavez’s history was widely known in the community.

“I admit that the board maybe should’ve removed him sooner, but the whole community knew about Dean,” Zivat said. “Police knew. Firemen knew. I admit fault, but so should the whole community.

“I played at that league when I was little. I grew up there,” he said. “I just felt like someone ripped something out of me when they told me I couldn’t be on the board again. I just feel kind of violated that a family could come in there and dictate what goes on in this community.”

That defense, quite understandably, held little water with the Matthews family, which continued to insist that Chavez should not be allowed to work with children, and that serving the league was a “privilege, not a right.” The Matthews family won out in the end, with Chavez gone as well as the board members who had defended his role.